Gustavo Cadile can explain better than anyone what it means to be at the right time and in the right place to achieve what you want. It is enough to know that the boy who made his first dress sketches inspired by Eva Perón ended up dressing celebrities such as Susana Giménez, Catherine Zeta Jones and Eva Longoria. His models shone on the red carpets of the Emmys, the Golden Globes and the Oscars. History, of course, has a secret: this 52-year-old designer, who today lives between Miami and New York, has fashion in his DNA, since his great-grandfather, Enrico Dell'Acqua, was a pioneer in the Italian textile industry in Milan and in South America.
"I think I have an eye for the quality of the fabrics in my blood," admits Cadile. “And since I spent a part of my life working in Milan, I looked for my origins there, which helped me put that Milanese sensibility in my designs.”
It all started in Junín, 260 kilometers from Buenos Aires, where Cadile lived in the house located just opposite the one that had belonged to Eva Perón when she arrived from Los Toldos. Next to her lived Juana, a woman to whom Eva's sisters left many things of who was an actress and First Lady.
Among them were some photos of Evita wearing dresses signed by Christian Dior, images that inspired him to sketch his first models. "I would go to Juana's house, I would see all that and when she returned to mine, I would start drawing like crazy," recalls Cadile.
Another of his favorite activities was parading his cousins and friends in the family mansion. He dressed them in his grandmother's clothes, which he had previously adapted for each of them.
"It was the time of a TV show called The Art of Elegance by Jean Cartier, where they showed fashion shows," he recalls with a laugh. “He paraded everyone. So much so that once, on a plane, a woman came up to me and she said: Are you Gustavo Cadile?' When we were kids you used to make me parade for you.”
Cadile's path, which began as a game in his hometown, included stopovers in the great European capitals of fashion, such as Paris and Milan, until he settled permanently in the United States, with one foot in New York and the other in Miami. , where a showroom has just opened. In the middle, of course, there was a lot of fabric to cut.
-How were your first steps in fashion?
-I finished school and came to Buenos Aires, where in addition to studying Graphic Design, I went to work in a boutique called “Melón con Azúcar”, located in Santa Fe and Callao, in a basement. The owner always dressed in black and she asked me for ideas for her collections. I remember that many models came to see the clothes. I was there for three years until I moved to Miami, where I had been on vacation and had been dazzled.
Was it easy for you to start in the industry?
-When I arrived in Miami I wanted a job in a store, but I didn't have money and I didn't speak English. I went to work in a restaurant: it was the '90s, the great boom of Madonna and Versace. I remember that there were many models in the place as waitresses and one of them, who knew that I wanted to be a designer, told me to go work in Bal Harbor, where the best stores are, like Saks and Neiman Marcus. I fell in love with the clothes there: I remember the draping on Emanuel Ungaro's dresses, for example. So I said to myself: "I'm not leaving here." And I got my job.
-You had a good start...
-At the beginning I worked in an area where we received all the boxes that arrived from Europe with the fashion collections. But at noon I went to the Neiman store. The haute couture was on the second floor and I looked at all the designs, the Thierry Mugler jackets, the embroidery on the garments... The manager was a French woman who was called "the dragon woman" because she was very brave, very strict. People were terrified of him.
-With that nickname, I imagine...
-One day, while I was looking at the new collections, she passed by, staring at me, lowering her glasses in the best style of Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Fashion, and seriously tells me: “Gustavo, this is not your apartment, what are you doing here?” I took advantage of the moment and launched myself: "I want to work for you, because I want to be a designer and learn everything that haute couture is." Then she said to me: "Whose dress is this mannequin?" I replied: “Valentino”. Then she asked me: "And what texture is it made of?" "Velvet," I said. She listened to me and she told me that she was leaving, that she was very busy.
-I'm intrigued by the ending, I confess...
-When I returned at 8 in the morning the next day, my boss, whose name was Diego, told me that he no longer worked with him. "Don't tell me he kicked me out," I said, thinking that "the dragon woman" had gotten angry. “No, now you are going to work for her”, he answered me. And so it was: he asked me to help her with the parades that were held in the store and with the best clients... It was incredible. I served women who spent $300,000 on a purchase. I learned what women like: to cover the knee, not to see the rolls of the arms...
-The opportunity of your dreams...
-Yes, my new boss was showing me clothes and I made drawings of what I liked on a pad of sheets that she herself had given me. She made about 20. One day she asked me to go with her to a place: I was surprised because I didn't know what it was about, and she took me to the Institute of Design in Miami, where they gave me a scholarship for all the drawings I had in the block. A movie story.
-Many classify you, especially in Argentina, as a celebrity designer. Who was the first celebrity you dressed?
-Susana Gimenez. And I came to her from the launched that I am. She was graduating in Miami and she had three dresses ready. A friend calls me to tell me that Susana was recording her programs there and she told me to go show her what I was doing. The first thing I thought was that she was dressing with Thierry Mugler, where she worked at that time Kouka, the famous Argentine model who was successful in Paris, and that it would be great to ask her for a letter of recommendation to go see her. I went to the hotel, obviously you couldn't go to the place of the recording, and suddenly a black car arrived from which Susana got out with her dog Jasmine in her arms and Miguel Romano. So I approached Miguel, I gave him the dresses and he took me in a minute to Susana's dressing room. She told me that she loved the black mermaid cut with stones on the corset and a glove that wrapped around her neck. “Bring it to me tomorrow”, she asked me. I think that's where I had my first panic attack (laughs). The next day Susana had my dress on, which was divine on her. She combined it with some Gucci shoes. It was the year 1998.
Did you dress her again?
Yes, of course, several times. Once she came to see me in New York with Mecha and I made her the blue dress that she wore for a Martín Fierro. She brought it to Buenos Aires without trying it on beforehand and it fit her perfectly. Susan is amazing.
-And the letter for Kouka?
-She made it, so I went to Paris to see her. She looked at my portfolio of sketches. But I didn't speak French and she told me that I wouldn't be treated well in France if she didn't speak the language. She recommended that I try my luck in Italy, the country of my great-grandfather.
Cadile's stay in Milan was not very long, although she worked for various Italian brands. In 2000, while buying some fabrics in New York for one of her clients, she came across a person who worked at the Perry Ellis brand and who praised her good taste in choosing textures and colors in the silk shop. She offered him to work in New York for the brand that he represented and the Argentine did not hesitate for a second.
“I remember being given an office where Marc Jacobs had worked. When I settled in, I found several sketches signed by him that I treasure to this day, ”says Cadile, who after three years at Perry Ellis left looking to fulfill his dream: to make haute couture dresses. She ended up working for Oleg Cassini, a designer who had dressed Grace Kelly and Jackie Kennedy.
-That's where your passion for making wedding dresses was born...
-Yes, but something incredible happened to me. A friend told me that a girl who was getting married was going to call me, that she couldn't pay for the dress but she could for the fabric. I told him yes, of course. The dress was divine and I was invited to the party on a Saturday. The following Monday, she calls me the manager of the Neiman Marcus store, who had been one of the guests, and within a week I was selling them my dresses. It was the beginning of my brand: that's how I started selling under my name.
-Another movie scene like your encounter with “the dragon woman”.
-Yes, and it goes on: Neiman used to do fashion shows with the designers who sold his clothes in the store. In one of them, he opened Oscar de la Renta and I closed. I remember sharing the table with De la Renta, an incredible person. When the parade ends they tell me that I have a calling and she was “the dragon woman”. Can you believe?
While he was selling his clothes at Neiman Marcus in New York and suffering the ups and downs of the American economy, the couturier received a call that, once again, would change his career. “She was the assistant of Catherine Zeta Jones, whom I had seen from afar on a red carpet in Italy when she premiered the film Zorro, with Antonio Banderas, and for whom that same night I had imagined dresses that I drew on paper. He told me that Catherine had seen Eva Longoria in OK magazine in a dress of mine and wanted me to dress her, ”he says.
-Another wish that came true...
-Yes. His assistant gave me the measurements and I designed a purple dress that was one of his options for a red carpet. I remember taking him to the hotel and asking the concierge to let me know what color dress she was wearing when she came down from her room. After a while she called me to tell me that she had purple. There I ran out with my assistant and, when we got to her hotel, Catherine was surrounded by people carrying my model.
- Were there other times?
- Yes, many, luckily. I dressed her for several red carpets, I was at her house trying on her clothes, I even met Michael (Douglas, her husband). I remember that once her daughter was in one of the tests, that at that time she was little, and she told her mother that she looked like a princess. Cathy replied that when she grew up, she would wear those dresses.
-What does a designer have to have to get there?
-Perseverance, claw, a lot of desire and love for what he does.
Does style matter?
-Yes of course. I now work for the Bergdorf Goodman store: I make wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, party dresses. I try to impose my style that is classic, elegant, timeless. I think my work reflects Argentine glamor with European sensibility and American simplicity.
-You make dresses that are usually worn only once. Or now they can be repeated?
-There is a tendency to repeat the great dresses. They are no longer for one-time use and I love that. I have clients who bring dresses that I made for them two years ago and we recycle them. It is a way to support sustainability. I can sell the new dress to someone else.
-Did it cost you more to succeed in fashion for being Latino and Argentine?
-When I started selling at Neiman and then at Saks, they told me that there was a lot of color in fashion. Or that Oscar (De la Renta) was already there for colored evening dresses. But I always made colors, only now I changed to black with this collection that I brought to Argentina, which is more rock.
-The colors are not more difficult to combine?
-No, it all depends on how you wear them, with what shoes and what accessories. The color is divine, it looks great. Black gives elegance and sobriety, but for a night when you want to shine, the color is unbeatable.
-What inspires you?
-The woman, always the woman. When I worked at Oleg Cassini, I had free lunches and went to the gym. One of the owners offered me to be a personal trainer and made me take a course in which I learned the techniques for modeling the body, and I turned all of this over to the women I work for. At that time I met my accountant, who encouraged me to start my own brand. I remember that we trained talking about dresses and to this day she admits to me that she never had a body as good as when we trained together (laughs).
-How many women have marked you! Eva Perón, Susana, Catherine Zeta Jones, Eva Longoria, your accountant and “the dragon woman”, of course...
-I think so. All designers love the celebrity, but I give importance to the history with the celebrity. When Eva Longoria was making Desperate Housewives, I sent an email to her agency in Los Angeles showing her what she was making of her. And I crossed myself. Five minutes later they answered me and we talked. They liked what I did from the first moment and I got to dress her more than 27 times. We even shared a red carpet in Hollywood once.
Gustavo Cadile arrived in the country at the beginning of December not only to spend a few days with his family, but also to fulfill a commitment to Opi Argentina, which is celebrating 40 years of the brand with a collection that has a line called Hollywood, for which was summoned. He sketched the dresses of five Hollywood divas as they walked the red carpet: Audrey Hepburn, Julia Roberts, Hally Berry, Reneé Zellweger and Penélope Cruz.
-How is your relationship with the country?
-I love going to Junín, my city, where I share a lot with my family and my lifelong friends. This Christmas we treat ourselves to going all together to Córdoba, to San Marcos Sierra.
-Would you open a store in Buenos Aires?
-I'd love to. Although I would like to have a showroom, but for me now everything happens through Miami. Due to the pandemic, many clients moved there from New York, because their husbands work from home and it is much cheaper to have a house in Miami than in New York: there is more freedom and a better climate. So now I live between the two cities.
-Did you think about making an accessible line or are they only looking for luxury?
-They look for me a lot for weddings and parties, it's the truth. It's mine. The bride comes first, then the mother, the sister, the cousin, and so the whole family arrives. Even grandma!
-How did you survive the pandemic where there were not so many parties or so many weddings?
-Luckily I sold my bridal collection to Bergdorf Goodman. To be able to do it, I went by bike to the seamstresses' house because none of them left their house.
-How do you imagine the future?
-Among the three places I love the most: New York, Miami and Buenos Aires. Creating, inspiring myself in those cities where the energy of the people is unique.
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